


Something Bad

by sexyvanillatiger



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dark, Dubious Consent, F/F, Inception Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexyvanillatiger/pseuds/sexyvanillatiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne gets caught up in Mrs. Cobb's strange designs on her husband's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Bad

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings in the tags.
> 
> A great thanks to beili, without whose art and support this fic would not exist.

The meeting with Mrs. Cobb is scheduled for one thirty on a Tuesday afternoon at a café of Mrs. Cobb's choosing. Ariadne's only job is to come, record the client's needs, assess whether the agency can fulfill these needs, and schedule a follow-up meeting if they can. It's not the worst summer job she's ever held, but it is the one that leaves her the most tired, the most exhausted by the fate of humanity.

The agency is run by some cousins who are always desperately in need of these mobile secretaries. Without ever taking a résumé, they've accepted her for summer positions for the past three years. In these years, she's seen clients fearing job discrimination. She's seen clients trying to find lost family members, or biological parents, or given-up sons and daughters. Most of all, she's seen the desire to discover infidelity in unhappy marriages. As though a marriage that is broken enough can be justified by something as simple as cheating.

Her cousins have a policy; to remain a reputable agency, she has turned down every relationship problem that has come to their doorstep. She's done it without a single crack of remorse. She looks at these people and sees feeble, vengeful husks of a marriage, one that may never have been fruitful to begin with.

Suffice to say, she's never had trouble turning anyone down until she sits across from Mrs. Cobb, with hair curled tightly beneath a stylish cap; reminiscent of the aesthetic of eras passed. Pearl earrings, spring coat, so many rings on her fingers that it's hard to find her wedding ring. Ariadne realizes that she's not wearing it. Makes a little note of that, even though it doesn't matter.

"Hate to break it to you, Mrs. Cobb," Ariadne says, "But we don't settle marital disputes."

                      

Mrs. Cobb smiles a tight half-smile, one that looks practiced. Can people go to school to be this beautiful? "I understand, darling. I suppose I always knew that it would be something I had to take care of myself."

Ariadne frowns, tucking her pencil behind her ear. At first, Mrs. Cobb looked feline in the _recline and let you perish_ sort of way. Just a normal cat type person. Now, though, the shadows have fallen on her face in the most unfortunate of ways, drawing into sharp, feral fangs of edges. Ariadne cracks a crooked grin. "What do you mean 'take care of'?"

Mrs. Cobb flashes a beautiful smile and tilts her head endearingly. "Oh, darling, you're so young. It's something you wouldn't understand."

Something about the shine of sharp canines in that smile makes Ariadne feel for Mr. Cobb, and she leans forward in her seat to say, "Whoa, whoa, c’mon, Mrs. Cobb…I'm sure this is all just something that can be solved with some simple marriage counseling." She laughs a little bit to try and diffuse the situation, but all she does is extinguish the niceties in Mrs. Cobb's smile. The screech of chair legs moving too suddenly against the floor nearly startles Ariadne out of her own seat.

"No, a child like you would not understand," she says, and is briskly out the door and on the sidewalk. Ariadne rushes to shove her notebooks and pencils into her bag before racing out after her.

"Hey, wait!" she cries out, sneakers slapping against the pavement, the beat of them outplaying the soft clicks of Mrs. Cobb's heels. "I didn't mean to…I was just trying to help, okay? This agency just doesn't take marriage cases. I'm sorry."

Mrs. Cobb watches her for a moment, and then smiles. Stops and reaches out to caress her cheek with the knuckle of one gloved finger. Ariadne freezes and tries not to give herself away, though she can already feel the flush spreading through her face. She's done a really good job of just never having the time to be interested in boys. Nobody has ever questioned it. Mrs. Cobb sees right through her. It's so terrifying it hurts.

"Come with me," Mrs. Cobb says. "I will help you." That catlike smile again, those hungry eyes, sharp teeth, sharp accent, skin sharpened like broken porcelain. "And then you will help me."

Ariadne really shouldn't. She really really shouldn't. All she's here to do is tell Mrs. Cobb that the agency can't help her. She is not to attend to Mrs. Cobb. She is not to get involved with Mrs. Cobb.

Which means she really shouldn’t go back to a motel with Mal, shouldn’t wait dutifully in the car while she gets a room. Sliding the chain to lock the door when they finally get in and when she turns around, Mal is undressing.

"Oh my god," Ariadne breathes, the sound gusty through her lips, eyes wide, hands clenched at her side. Mrs. Cobb slips the other strap off of her shoulder and the whole torso of the garment falls, leaving her bare, leaving Ariadne breathless. Ariadne slams her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. "Mrs. Cobb—"

"Mal," she interrupts. "My name is Mal, and I wish to hear you say it."

" _Mal_ …"

"Good."

Mal lets the rest of the dress slide to the floor, leaving her only in these panties that look etched right into her skin. Ariadne briefly wonders if she'll be able to get them off. Mal turns to the window, wide open, sun hitting them everywhere, and closes the curtains. Ariadne shuffles around to find a lamp but Mal lays her back before she can even really go anywhere. It's the same sort of thrilling as lion taming, probably.

When Mal kisses her, it's nothing like the way Mal kissed her earlier, convincing her to come here, convincing her that there was nothing wrong with taking an extended lunch break after meeting with a client. Besides, Mal had had eighteen minutes of her appointment left, and even though those minutes have since expired, Ariadne can see how her cousins might just understand if she comes back late and a little ruffled.

Ariadne's jeans are undone. Her jacket is off and her shirt is rucked up but for god's sake, she still has her Chucks on. And she also has Mal's hand down the front of her pants, and it's making it hard to care about how she's messing up the face of the comforter with the soles of her nasty sneakers. Mal's body is soft against her, lips warm and open.

At first, the touches are soft, barely-there, Ariadne's hips curling upwards towards them without even meaning to. Mal must have experience. Ariadne doesn't think she's ever been so turned on, never really touched herself in this way, or been touched by someone like Mal. The heel of her hand pushing down against her pelvic bone, sending sparks shuddering down through her thighs.

Mal undoes her in minutes, and it's weird, because Ariadne's just not that kind of girl. She takes time and expertise and a lot of patience, but Mal just works her like with a welding gun. Melting her down. Setting her into place. Not letting her finish until she does so with eyes wide open, focused on Mal.

"Oh, fuck," she chokes out, fingers reaching up towards Mal's hair but never taking it in her hands, only getting as far as her shoulders.

Mal kisses her in the afterglow, her stomach still heaving as she rights her breathing. Lies down alongside her, head propped on her hand, watching. Ariadne never noticed how dark Mal's eyes seem. Light in color, light in intent, but something about her seems dimmed. Hidden, more like. Ariadne reaches up and finally runs her fingers through some of Mal's curls. They're stiff to the touch.

"What will you say if I ask you to come to my home tomorrow?"

Ariadne huffs out a laugh and starts shimmying her way out of her clothes. "Um, _yeah_? Are you kidding? I'd say _yes_."

Mal rises from the bed, only going far enough to take a styrofoam cup from beside the obligate hotel coffee machine and fill it with water. She brings it back to Ariadne, who wonders if Mal will let her reciprocate anything.

The answer is no. Mal just holds her for awhile, soft conversation meandering between them. Sometimes they kiss. Ariadne only leaves when her cousins start calling her, and she looks back before she does. She looks back and almost doesn't turn forward again. Almost becomes that pillar of salt. Almost stays. But Mal isn't looking at her. Mal is adjusting the straps of her dress and righting the curls that Ariadne disheveled.

Ariadne watches the ground as she leaves.

Sort of gets yelled at when she gets back to the office, but not really, because none of her cousins are the yelling type. One of them raises his voice and waves papers at her, trying to explain the importance of a good reputation, but he ends up running out of words and then running out of steam. She's not really off the hook, though, because they won't let her leave that night until she's re-organized all the files on potential clients that called in for the day, which are unorganized because she wasn't there to take those calls and her cousins didn't bother organizing in her stead.

So at a little past nine, she gets a text from an unfamiliar number, punctuated with one single smiley face. The kind that does the wink. Ariadne's smile blossoms without her consent.

The text has an address, which Ariadne saves before deleting the message.

 

Mal texts her again the next morning and asks if she’s working. Ariadne takes the day off and says no. _Good_ , Mrs. Cobb responds. _Come over. Wear something nice. No underwear._

Ariadne bites her lip and does as she’s told. She doesn’t have very many nice clothes, and most of what little she owns is comprised of button-downs and slacks, and something tells her that’s not what Mal is asking of her. She has a couple church dresses and a couple sundresses that pass as nice. She chooses one of the sundresses because it’s on the longer side, and she takes off her panties before putting it on.

It feels strange, riding the bus across town like this. Like everybody knows that she’s naked under her dress. Like someone is waiting for just the right moment to lift her skirt while she’s not looking. She gets to Mal’s house a shivering mess, pulling at her hair and rethinking the whole thing.

But Mal takes her face in two delicate hands and kisses her gentle. She remembers why she came like this, why she let herself be that uncomfortable on public transportation, and it was all for Mal. Mal loves it. Mal bends her over a nice dining room table in a huge dining room with a high ceiling and a chandelier and fits four fingers into her.

Ariadne just twists and takes it. She’s never felt this full. It’s incredible, almost uncomfortable, and she doesn’t have the gall to suggest that Mal treat her more gently. It’s amazing anyways. It’s incredible just being under the hands of someone like Mal. When Ariadne gets back home for the summer, she’s going to tell the friends she has who know about her and they’re going to be surprised and envious. She can imagine it now. The thought makes her even more into what is being done to her. The hem of the dress tickles her nose. She tries to push it back down a little but Mal doesn’t let her.

“I want to see your back, darling. You have the most beautiful skin.”

Ariadne feels her orgasm then. Blossoming from those words. Sprouting as warmth in her thighs all the way out until it hits her knees and she can’t stand right, ankles twisting to accommodate this strange new distribution of her weight over her nice shoes.

“How do you feel,” Mal asks with her fingers still in her, curling them idly, a little bit on the side of too much.

“Good,” Ariadne sobs, trying to twist away from the touches. Mal relinquishes her grip on the girl, pulling her hand away, and Ariadne slumps to the ground, holding herself up on the edge of the table.

“Do you know why I asked you over today?”

“This?” Ariadne asks, trying to regain composure, standing and leaning against the table so that she doesn’t have to let go of the afterglow.

Mal smiles seductively and it’s sort of terrifying. “No, child,” she says. She wipes her hand on a handkerchief and crouches down on the floor beside Ariadne. “I would like for you to meet my husband.”

Ariadne stops breathing for a moment before standing up too suddenly. She loses her balance and overcorrects, sitting on the table by the time she’s finished, and she’s trying to find a way to say _No. No, I won’t meet him. This is not what I signed up for._ Mal pushes her dress up and touches her bare thigh. Ariadne bites her lip and wonders why Mal even wants something like that. So she asks.

“You are going to help me get rid of him.”

At this point, it’s not even real. The things Mal is saying are beyond the reach of reality. Ariadne pushes her dress back down, offended that anybody would assume she can pull off something like murder. Or body-moving. Or anything of that sort. She’s a secretary, she doesn’t do agency work. She says so.

“Darling, don’t you understand? You’re my only hope. If I don’t get rid of him, he will kill me. He’s already sent our children away. I do not feel safe in this house. You must help me,” she says, and for once, Mal seems just as human as Ariadne feels.

“Mrs. Cobb, you need to call the police—“

“The _police_?” Mal exclaims, clutching her breast. “And when have they helped me! When I called them in the past, they refused to come! They have kept my name to mock me! No. This is something that I must take care of. But I cannot do it alone.”

“Mrs. Cobb, I don’t know how to get rid of a person.”

“You are a smart girl. You have connections, I’m sure.”

“No, I—I don’t. I don’t know anybody here. I mean, I’m just here for the summer, I don’t know…I mean, my cousins might know some people, but they don’t deal with, you know. _Murder_ things.” God help her, this is insane.

“No, child, you are mistaken. Your cousins are not so innocent as they care to appear.” Ariadne is about to interrupt, but Mal assures her that she knows this. “You could say that we have common friends. I’m sure there is an address book in their possession that we may use. Please fetch it for me.”

“Now?”

“No. My husband will be down any moment. You will meet him first. Fix your hair. The bathroom is down that hall, and then you will meet me in the dining room, this way.”

Ariadne stares at Mal’s back and doesn’t understand what is happening. She feels her hair, and sure enough, it’s in knots. Her dress is askew, and she still feels bare and now sticky. She walks to the bathroom with all of her weight on the outside of her feet, taking strange-looking steps.

What’s going to happen is that Mal is going to go crazy and they’re going to take her away. She’s going to throw things. She’s going to pull a knife on her husband and he’s going to break her wrist on accident when he tries to save himself. She may or may not be stopped by the pain, but in the end, she will be stopped. She’ll go to prison and Ariadne will get fired from her cousins’ agency and she’ll go home with a final paycheck in her pocket.

She still can’t convince herself to leave now.

The bathroom is of ivory, and Ariadne feels death in there, her hands tracing the white granite countertops. The metal of the faucet, gleaming a soft rose color. Her reflection such an awful interruption in the sterile gleam. A bathroom like surgical instruments, Ariadne the speck of blood. Ariadne manages to get her hair to lay flat. She rights her dress and finds that she doesn’t look as licentious as she feels.

This new dining room is quite the opposite, completely furnished in dark wood furniture and painted with deep maroon walls. The carpet, what seems to be an ordinary beige, looks quite grey in the small light afforded through a few gaps in the curtains. Mal is seated at one end of a fairly long table. Ariadne is invited to sit at the midway seat.

No plates have been set, and Mal does not say a word. Minutes or hours tick by until Dom Cobb makes his way into the room, only hesitating briefly when he sees Ariadne. The wait staff presents their platters the moment Mr. Cobb is seated, and Ariadne rejoices in a distraction from the unhappy couple. She eats faster and more enthusiastically than is generally allowed in such a quiet, formal setting. Neither Cobb seems to mind.

“Excuse me, young lady, I’m not sure we’ve met,” Dom finally says, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

Ariadne, trapped with food in her mouth, chews unsurely and swallows painfully. “Um,” she clears her throat, “no sir. We haven’t.”

“May I ask how it is you came to know my wife?”

“I met her at lunch,” Mal jumps in, inclining forward with her jaw rested on one relaxed hand. “I’m sure I told you about this before bed last night, you must not have been listening.”

Mr. Cobb tenses conspicuously before conspicuously loosening once more. “No, you couldn’t have. I wasn’t home last night.”

Mal does not even pretend to be surprised. “Oh, I apologize. The night before then.”

Dom’s jaw tightens but he says no more. Ariadne stuffs another bite into her mouth and stares at her plate. Dom calling out to her has her almost swallowing everything in her mouth once more, preparing to respond, but that is not what she is called to do. He merely informs her that he wishes to speak to his wife in private. Mal stands and begins to make her way around the table.

“Actually, Ariadne, the meal is almost over. I believe it is just about time for you to be getting back to your cousins’ workplace, don’t you think?” As she passes, her hand sweeps over Ariadne’s shoulders. “There was a book your left there?”

Ariadne stumbles before saying, “Yes. Yeah, gotta, uh. Um, grab something. I’ll see you around Mrs. Cobb.”

She stumbles away from her seat and looks back to find both Cobbs watching her leave. She trips and almost displays her bareness to them, but catches herself on the edge of the table, and the whole ride home is more terrifying and more vulnerable than the last.

She changes into casual clothes before going over to her cousins’. Underwear included.

Everybody expects her to be home sick. _Everybody_ is not a substantial amount of people, just a few family members and family friends, but still, Ariadne takes no chances. She parks her car down a couple blocks and enters at the back of the strip mall. It’s almost twelve, so people should be leaving for lunch soon. To her left is a unisex bathroom, which she ducks into while people start filing out of their offices. She locks the door and pushes her ear against it.

Her cousins’ voices begin to echo around the hallway, immediately clear and then slowly fading away. For a long while, no voice then follows. She silently pulls the door open, edging her way into the hall. It’s empty. Every office she checks is empty. The front door is locked. Ariadne’s entire body floods with relief.

The head office is about as boring and typical as all the other offices. Nothing specifically should be locked because neither money nor files are kept here. And yet, Ariadne tries the knob and for the first time in her knowing it, it doesn’t budge. She pulls two bobby pins from below her ponytail, short wisps of hair tickling her neck, and she lets herself in. There are two desks in the room, and she checks the one on the left first. Lots of files, most of them active. Some blank notebooks, some filled notebooks. Nothing important. Lots of dried up pens.

The desk on the right seems just the same way. Ariadne dryly goes through pulling out drawer after drawer, thinking that she’ll have to go back to Mal and tell her that there were no address books.

And then, the long drawer in the front snaps back against her grip. Her fingers take small lesions in their crease and her surprise makes the pain louder than she’s ready for. She yanks her hand back, shaking it out and pressing it close in her other hand. When she’s ready, she pulls against the handle again, gentler. The drawer still doesn’t budge.

Ariadne pushes her seat out so that she can lean forward to get a better look. From this vantage point, she can see a keyhole, and she leans back with her face in her hands, groaning. Not because of the obstruction, but because she knows that behind it, there is going to be a little black book that she’s going to have to take back to Mal, and God knows what the woman is doing right now.

The lock is easy. She wields her straightened-out bobby pins and the drawer pops open obligingly. Ariadne pulls the drawer the rest of the way open, and briefly wonders if she should be wearing gloves.

Her thoughts spiral into nothing when the drawer reveal not one, not two, but four identical black books. She opens the front cover of all of them, and all of them are filled top to bottom with contacts. Names, numbers, addresses, scratched-out addresses and new addresses. Ariadne pulls out her phone, snaps a picture and sends it to Mal.

_which one_ ,

she attaches to the picture message. Puts her phone on the table and waits, wondering if she should be going through these while Mal takes her time sending a response. She flips through the first couple pages of each book. Nothing much stands out to her, and of course. If her cousins are in league with special services, so to speak, they’d hardly want to make one name seem more suspect than another.

Still, Mal hasn’t texted back yet, so she starts to flip through more of the books. Glancing at names, glancing at area codes. Most of them are unfamiliar. Every ten pages or so, she’ll recognize a particular client’s name. Three of the four books are like this. Flipping, checking the clock, checking the front door, more flipping. She’s ready to leave when she flips right past something strange in the fourth book.

She turns a couple pages back and finds three names on one page, the rest of the page and the entire next page blank. Just these three names, on an entire white spread, surrounded on all sides by scribbled information.

Without waiting any longer, Ariadne replaces the other books, pushes the drawer back in and leaves without bothering to check the lock on it.

_Dominic Cobb_  
Arthur ▓▓▓▓▓  
▓▓▓ _Eames_

Ariadne doesn’t stop at the front door when she gets to Mal’s house. She barrels through and calls out her name, waving the book in the air when she sees her. “Mal, I got it. I found this one, it has your husband’s name in it—“

“Good. Bring it here.”

Mal is tense, quiet, her voice unusually rigid. Ariadne takes a moment to find the stairs but once she does, she ascends to the balcony where Mal is waiting for her, and to her surprise, is pulled into a hug when she gets there. She wraps her arms around Mal before realizing that Mal is drenched in something.

Ariadne heaves and heaves until her breakfast comes up. Mal is covered in blood. Her black dress makes it difficult to see, but the stain of it on Ariadne’s clothes is very clear.

Mal takes the book from her hand as she tries to right herself, and she pulls out a phone. Punches in a number, hands it to Ariadne before she feels ready to talk, and tells her to order their services immediately.

“Who’s speaking?” a man says on the line. Ariadne scrambles to respond, but doesn’t know how, because that’s not a question she was expecting.

“Ariadne?”

“Ma’am, do you have the wrong—“

“I’m calling for Mal. Mal Cobb.”

The man pauses and Ariadne is about to say something but Mal takes the phone right out of her hand. “Dom is dead,” she says into the receiver, her hands just freshly washed of their burden. “No, I need you here now.”

“Then take the next flight.”

“The expense is mine. Bring me a report. _After_ the job is completed.”

“Yes. It’s all in the garage.”

“Bring him with you.”

She hands up without saying goodbye. Ariadne watches in horror and feels like she might throw up again. She’s crying and she can’t stop herself. She tries to tell Mal that she wants to go home.

Mal backs her up against a wall and traces a hand up the inside of her thigh. Ariadne sobs and sort of shivers. “It’s okay, darling,” Mal says, her voice soft and alluring once more. “Everything will be okay. By tomorrow, there will be no more problem. Would you like to stay with me in my bed tomorrow night?”

Against all of the good judgment in her head, Ariadne nods, because she would love to do that. She wants so desperately to be in Mal’s bed, and Mal just carved out a spot for her there. Blood probably still pulsing out of the empty space. Throat slashed, stomach slashed. Ariadne pushes away and heaves again.

She spends the next hour sipping water and crying in uneven intervals. The first glance of herself she catches in a mirror is frightening; her face is puffy and pale. She looks like a bloated corpse risen from the sea. Her thoughts drift to Mr. Cobb and she cries again.

But she refuses to leave. Mal watches her diligently while preparing for the men who are coming. Preparing food, preparing herself. The black dress she was wearing has been replaced with long, black slacks and a button-down half buttoned down. The longer Ariadne stares, the more clearly she is able to see the shadow of a black lace bra beneath the thin fabric of the blouse.

“Get up,” Mal tells her eventually. Takes her by the elbow and lifts her out of her seat. “We need to get you ready.”

“For what?” Ariadne asks, her voice weak.

“For Arthur.”

Arthur, as Mal describes him, expects a certain amount of order. He will expect Ariadne to be as pulled together as the rest of them. He will not care that she is not prepared for the tasks at hand as long as she looks prepared. Mal washes her face and does her makeup. Takes her into the back of a closet in an advanced state of disuse. Finds a dress that fits and lets her wear her underwear beneath it.

“What about Eames?” Ariadne asks while Mal is fitting her in a pair of heels.

“Eames would not care if you were stark naked and bathed in blood.”

Mal sends her back into the bathroom to play with her hair if she so desires. She tells Ariadne to meet her at the front door when the bell rings. If Ariadne needs anything, Mal will be in the garage. Ariadne makes sure that she does not need anything, and by the time the doorbell echoes through the house, the most she has gotten her hair to do is lay calmly at her shoulders.

Together, they meet the men at the door, the pair of them playing the part of hostesses only until Mal takes them back into the garage. Ariadne feels every bit of fear come back into her, and she has to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from gagging again. Mr. Cobb’s body is already in pieces—head, torso, limbs, all distinct from one another. A tarp is laid down beneath him, saving the floor from stains. Arthur comments on this, but quietly, to himself. One less thing he has to worry about.

Mal breaks from a picturesque stillness and begins pointing out supplies, apparently things Arthur and Eames had requested. Plastic tubs and bottles of chemicals. Biohazard and chemical waste buckets. Arthur takes his tie off and stuffs it into his pocket. Eames removes his jacket. They both put on long rubber gloves and protective eye gear.

“You will stay here and attend to their needs,” Mal whispers into her ear as Eames hoists body parts into the tubs.

Ariadne turns to ask her where she is going, but she’s already left. So Ariadne stands there, in a cocktail dress and high heels, watching the blood puddle around on the tarp.

“So, darling. I hear this is your first time.”

Ariadne startles and takes a step back. “What?”

Eames looks up from where he’s unscrewing a cap off of one of the bottles and repeats himself. “Bit classy, though, I suppose. Wearing a party dress to a murder scene. Mal got your trained already?”

It’s difficult to keep up. “How many people has she killed before?”

Eames laughs and Arthur looks up from his work with a scowl. Mutters something to Eames and the man quiets, carefully pouring acid into the bin. It bubbles, squeals, hisses. Ariadne closes her eyes and feels faint.

“Nothing to worry about, love. You ever took a basic chemistry class? You’re not still in secondary school, right? This is just basic chemistry. Nothin’ to worry about it.” Eames smiles a charming smile and drops Mr. Cobb’s ring into the mess.

Arthur glances between Eames and Ariadne, and all at once, he seems to recognize that she is a fellow human being. It’s not much, so to speak, but he definitely looks at her with less scorn on his face this time.

“Eames, I need you to bring the van back here. We can’t load this stuff up all the way across the house.”

“Course,” Eames mumbles, pulling his gloves and goggles off. Arthur does the same. Eames takes leave without looking back, and Arthur moves catlike around the garage. They have yet to dispose of the tarp, but Ariadne doubts that they’re done. This seems like a break for convenience.

“Who are you,” Arthur says with a strange intonation that makes it sound like he’s not asking.

“My name—“

“I don’t care about your name,” he snaps, stepping forward into her space. “I want to know who you are and how you know Mal.”

“We met. She came to my cousins’ detective agency and I went to get her story.”

“And you acquiesced to her demands to help dispose of her husband’s body?”

“ _No_ , I mean, I didn’t—I didn’t know she was going to kill him!” Ariadne is crying again. Her eye makeup is burning her eyes. “I just met him this morning,” she says, staring at the tubs as though Cobb will rise out of them.

She’s so focused on the tubs that she doesn’t see Arthur move, just feels his hand around her throat, shoving her back against the cold, concrete wall. She starts to scream for help, but his palm pushes down and she can’t say anything. She grapples at his wrist, and he makes her promise to be quiet. She does, and he loosens his grip enough for the passage of air.

“I’m not comfortable with you here,” he tells her. “I don’t like working with people I don’t trust, and I don’t trust you.” His free hand plays with the collar of her dress before tangling in her hair. He pulls her head back by it. “Do you want to know why?”

“Please, I promise, I’m not gonna tell,” she tries to say. All she can manage is a terrified wheeze.

“I can tell you’re scared. I know the look in your eyes. You’re the kind of mouth that can’t keep a secret quiet. You’re too scared of it.”

“No,” she gasps.

“No what?” he asks.

“I won’t tell.”

“Tell me why.”

He already knows. She realizes that he already knows what Mal has taken from her, knows how she feels about that. He wants her to say it. “Because I love her,” she replies. Arthur is fast, alarmingly fast. The expressions crossing his face, he leans in close and their lips almost touch.

“You love her?”

His kiss hurts. Biting, stinging, hissing. Ariadne pushing as he pulls. Her heart hammers in her chest and almost stops when something vibrate beneath her dress. Her phone, she realizes, tucked away in her bra. She thinks that maybe it has gone unnoticed until Arthur’s hand slips in against her breast, curling her stomach in disgust, and yanking the device free.

“How do you know this man?” he asks after opening the text. Staring at her hard like he didn’t expect this.

“He’s my cousin,” she groans pitifully.

“He wants to know where you are. Are you going to tell him?”

“No!”

“Good.” Arthur takes the phone over to the bin. Ariadne slides down the wall and tries to catch her breath. She doesn’t realize what Arthur is doing until he’s dropped the phone into the acid. She struggles to stand then, shouting at him for ruining her phone, how else is she supposed to get out of here if something goes wrong, and she stops shouting immediately when Arthur shouts back, asks her why she’s planning to leave when something goes wrong, doesn’t she know how these things work? He stalks back up to her. Takes her by the throat and lifts her back onto her feet. He’s not saying a word now, but this time, he doesn’t have to.

“Oi, s’going on in here?” Eames asks loudly, approaching Arthur from behind and wrapping an arm around his waist. “C’mon, leave the girl alone,” he whispers right into Arthur’s ear, and Arthur has this look about him that he would eat Ariadne alive if Eames would let him. Instead, he lets go of her throat and walks back over to the tarp, which the two men fold meticulously and deposit into another bin of acid.

“Where’s Mal?” Ariadne asks, but neither man answers. They secure the lids over the bins and then place them into even larger bins labeled for waste, and they carry these out of the garage. She sits where she is and waits for them to come back, but they don’t. She steps out of the garage and the truck is gone and she stands in the doorway, confused and ready to cry again.

The house is also empty, as far as she can tell. It seems that everyone involved left and left her behind. She reaches the foot of the stairs when a voice in her ear whispers _Miss me?_. She shouts, stumbles and falls onto the stairs in front of her, turning around to see Eames smiling down.

“Mal is getting furious, love. You might want to turn on your phone and start answering her calls.”

“I don’t have my phone anymore.”

Eames clucks his tongue and bids her to follow him.

Mal really is furious when they get to the porch. Ariadne wants to shrink back through the door, but Eames closes and locks it before she has the chance. Arthur is in the driver’s seat of the ruck, and Ariadne hopes that Mal will sit shotgun but instead, she takes the backseat. Between the two devils, Ariadne decides to sit in the back. Eames offers her the front seat, says something about her getting carsick. Ariadne shakes her head and pointedly avoids Mal’s gaze.

They’ve only driven a short way, almost to the main road, when Arthur asks, “Alright, Mal, where am I dropping you off?” He turns his head briefly from the road to peer into the backseat, and Ariadne feels his eyes rake over her like nails. She adjusts her dress, worried that he’s mussed it up with the look on his face. He doesn’t turn back to the front quickly enough; her eyes water and she blinks quickly to stop herself from crying.

“Yusuf’s, please.”

Arthur grunts and Eames looks back at Ariadne. Ariadne glances between him and Mal, and Mal has this look on her face. Silently furious. Jealous, maybe? Ariadne thinks maybe she’s mad that there’s something for these men to even look at. Ariadne looks back at him and he winks at her before sitting straight once more.

Yusuf’s place is actually a pharmacy. Ariadne is terrified that this is where Arthur and Eames are going to unload the waste buckets, but they don’t. As soon as the two women unload from the backseat, as soon as that door slams shut, they tear out of the parking lot, and Ariadne looks back at Mal, who is already walking to the storefront. Ariadne trots behind her.

Yusuf takes one look at Mal and begins to walk around the counter, and then sees Ariadne and stops. Mal urges him on. He takes them to a store room where he and Mal talk in a language Ariadne doesn’t understand. Mal says something urgently and Yusuf steps back, kowtowing, head down.

“He will help us,” Mal says. “You cannot stay with me tonight, tonight there will be police. But tomorrow, you will come to me as I asked you to this morning.” She smiles in a way she hasn’t smiled much this afternoon, and Ariadne can’t find it in herself to smile back. She just nods and steps closer to Mal. Mal stops her and pushes her away, back towards the front.

“There is a bus stop at the corner. Go home for tonight.”

Ariadne leaves. The last thing she sees is Yusuf taking a swing right at Mal, who falls from the impact. Ariadne doesn’t stop walking until she reaches the bus stop.

 

LOS ANGELES — Philanthropist Dominic Cobb from the ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ area is still missing. After a reported confrontation with his wife, Cobb has fled to an unknown location.

Cobb was last seen at his home with his wife, Mallory Cobb, with a guest, a young woman from the ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ community. The guest reported witnessing a disturbance in which Mrs. Cobb was badly injured.

Cobb was reported to have fled the scene. He is believed to have left the area through a local airport, though no positive identifications have been made. Bank activity suggests that Cobb has left the country.

A reward is still in place for tips that lead to an arrest. Call (▓▓▓) ▓▓▓-▓▓▓▓.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Red shoes and a suitcase full of dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621510) by [beili](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beili/pseuds/beili)




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